P: Correct copying of crops and local adjustments

[John R Ellis]

[This version of the post from the old feedback forum was updated 11/1/21.]

Lightroom has long incorrectly copied crops and local adjustments between photos with different orientations. This post provides consistent principles of how copying should behave, test results of the current broken behavior, and a guide to implementing correct behavior.

How Copying Crops and Adjustments Should Behave

Users almost always place crops and local adjustments relative to the photo's content. A Spot Removal is placed over a blemish on a face; an Adjustment Brush lightens the shadows under eyes; a crop is placed tightly around a face; a Graduated Filter darkens the sky.

So if a user copies a crop or local adjustment from a raw to a TIFF produced from that raw by Photoshop, the user expects the adjustment to appear in the exact same visual position and have the same effect. A Graduated Filter aligned with the horizon in the raw should also be aligned with the horizon in the TIFF; a Spot Removal applied to a face blemish in the raw should be located on that blemish in the TIFF.

Problems

When a user edits a portrait raw in Photoshop, the saved TIFF will appear portrait. But internally, the orientations of the two photos are different – the raw pixels are stored in landscape with an orientation tag indicating a 90-degree rotation, while the TIFF pixels are stored in portrait with an orientation tag indicating no rotation.

When a user copies a crop or local adjustment between photos with different orientations or crops, LR usually copies the crop or adjustment incorrectly, placing it in the wrong location and with the wrong size. The precise behavior of LR has varied across versions, but it's never come close to being completely correct. 

I've done extensive testing of copying between orientations and crops, and the most recent results for LR 11.0 are posted below:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/lightroom-correct-copying-of-crops-and-local-...

There hasn't been much change from LR 10.3, though LR 11 did fix one important use-case, copying adjustments between masters and their virtual copies.

Implementing the Desired Behavior

Implementing the desired behavior is straightforward, requiring elementary coordinate transformations from the source to destination photos. I've implemented these transformations for my Copy Settings, Any Crop, and Any Filter plugins, and I've posted the source code for Copy Settings plugin.

Internally, LR represents a photo as an underlying image (an array of pixels) and an "orientation" tag, which specifies how much the underlying image should be rotated (0, 90, 180, 270 degrees) and whether it should be mirrored to display it visually. Rotating or flipping an image in LR changes just the orientation tag. But when you edit a photo in Photoshop, it actually rotates and mirrors the pixels in the underlying image as specified by the orientation, and the saved TIFF will then have an orientation tag with no rotation or mirroring.

LR represents the coordinates of crops and local adjustments with values in [0..1], where (0, 0) represents the upper-left corner of the underlying image before any orientation (rotation and mirroring) has been applied. Call this coordinate system the underlying-pixels coordinates. Call the coordinate system after the orientation has been applied the visible-pixels coordinates.

When copying, LR should translate the underlying-pixel coordinates of the adjustments in the source image to visible coordinates. Then it should translate those visible coordinates to the underlying pixel coordinates of the target photo.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@John_R_Ellis 

Thanks for the detailed report - it shows a lot of work and thought on your part. 

A few of the items in this list are active bugs scheduled for upcoming releases. It might be better to revisit this list after those are fixed to see what remainder we have that qualify for behavior change requests. 

Also keep in mind that some recent behavior changes are being made in conjunction with yet-to-be-released features that can't be discussed yet.

[John R Ellis]

Good                .

[Earth Oliver]

aren't you all putting the cart before the horse? Why would you choose to break workflows months and months before a new feature is released? Countless professionals use Classic to get their jobs done and now they have a much harder time doing so because the software is no longer working as expected. 
Is this going to be the new standard moving forward? 

[ievgenm77407445]

Of course it will be the new standard (and has been for some time). It's all about them moneyzzz.

[John R Ellis]

I've constructed a semi-automated test suite for Copy / Synchronize Settings that can be run with about 15 minutes of effort:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a10d49qc1m6c1f2/CopySettingstestsuite.2021.06.24.zip?dl=0 

The unzipped folder contains a _README.txt detailing how to run the suite and summarize the results in Excel.

The suite generalizes the results I presented above, testing combinations of rotation, cropping, and mirroring in the source and target photos, both unsaved and saved to metadata.

In the table below, the Source and Target representations are:

N - the photo is in normal orientation, with no rotation or mirroring (orientation AB)
C - same as N but with a crop applied, including a crop angle
R - the photo has been rotated clockwise (orientation BC)
RC - the photo has been rotated clockwise, with the same crop as C applied
RCM - the photo has been rotated clockwise and mirrored (flipped horizontal), with the same crop as C applied (orientation CB)

The adjustments tested are:

Crop -  a crop with a crop angle
Spot - a spot removal using Clone, with the source automatically selected
Graduated - a graduated filter, at angle
Radial - a radial filter, at angle
Up-Mode - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Mode
Up-Transforms - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Transforms
Tr-Adjustments - copying manual Transform adjustments

Some new observations: Copying Transform settings between different orientations doesn't work at all. Copying Transform > Auto with Upright Mode doesn't even work between photos with the same orientation!

[Todd Shaner]

Great job John! Just as an FYI to everyone I first reported this issue in a post three years ago, which was merged to a newer post. So I can confirm this is at least a three year old problem, which remains uncorrected in LrC 10.3.

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-synccopying-a-local...

[John R Ellis]

I released the Copy Settings plugin, which correctly copies local adjustments, spot removals, transforms, and crops between photos. It also lets you define presets for which settings should be copied.  I'm hoping that Adobe will fix all the bugs with Copy/Synchronize Settings soon, but meanwhile, this plugin will get the job done.

The code that translates Develop settings from one photo orientation to another is just over 400 lines, and I've made it available here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vv4i6nr1z5h22a5/copy-settings.2021.06.29.lua?dl=0 

And below are the test results for the plugin.  Like the built-in Copy/Synchronize Settings commands, the plugin can't correctly copy Transform > Upright Mode and Upright Transforms -- I wasn't able to figure out how to work around the bugs. The plugin can copy Transform Adjustments in many but not all cases:

[Bob Somrak]

I have a friend that used to use the Upright Mode and Upright Transform Syncing, Copying etc but pretty much gave up on these bugs being fixed after all this time. It should be embarrassing to Adobe to leave this unfixed for so long considering the issues are totally repeatable and easily duplicated.

[ievgenm77407445]

@John_R_Ellis 

[s] this is clearly impossible, you couldn't have done it on your own if the whole LR team and QA haven't managed to prioritize and nail it for so long. Please do not make us believe in unimaginable !!! [/sarcasm]

Thank you and great work as always, have been a happy user of some of your plugins!

[waltoncreative]

@John_R_Ellis 

Hi John,

On my first synchronise I get this error:

An Internal Error Has Occurred:

CopySettings.lua:448: attempt to concatenate field 'y' (a nil value)

I tried doing a synchronise first which brought up this error. I then tried copying and pasting settings which came up with the same error.

Am I doing something wrong?

[John R Ellis]

Hi Colin, this is clearly a bug (probably an internal representation of a Develop setting from an older version of LR that I didn't catch).  Please send an email to my support address so I can can get some details and I'll fix it asap.  (My standard policy is to provide complimentary licenses to anyone who first reports a reproducible bug.) Thanks.

[ievgenm77407445]

Dear Adobe, read and learn from the post above, this is how the business is done.

[C.Cella]

The fact that we can't sync or copy settings across differently cropped Virtual copies or snapshots is gravely damaging my workflow and it making me loose time and money.

This needs to be fixed.

[C.Cella]

Being unable to copy, sync local adjustments across differently cropped versions/virtual copies/snapshots of the same photo is gravely damaging my work.

I am loosing time, money.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

@John_R_Ellis  I've been hammering on the team and we have a bug filed and are working on resolution. 

[John R Ellis]

Very good          . 

[waltoncreative]

I love John's plug in! It takes Lightroom syncing to the next level introducing PRESETS. Which is even more time saving.

[John R Ellis]

I reran the test suite for Copy/Synchronize settings with LR 11.0. Though there are some changes in behavior since LR 10.3, for the most part crops and local adjustments still don't copy correctly between photos with different orientations and crops.

The suite can be downloaded from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayr602oegx3ofrr/Copy%20Settings%20test%20suite.2021.10.31.zip?dl=0

In the tables below, the Source and Target representations are:

N - the photo is in normal orientation, with no rotation or mirroring (orientation AB)
C - same as N but with a crop applied, including a crop angle
R - the photo has been rotated clockwise (orientation BC)
RC - the photo has been rotated clockwise, with the same crop as C applied
RCM - the photo has been rotated clockwise and mirrored (flipped horizontal), with the same crop as C applied (orientation CB)

U - the tested adjustment has not been saved to metadata in the source photo

S - the tested adjustment has been saved to metadata in the source photo

The adjustments tested are:

Crop - a crop with a crop angle
Spot - a spot removal using Clone, with the source automatically selected
Graduated - a graduated filter (linear gradient), at angle
Radial - a radial filter (radial gradient), at angle
Up-Mode - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Mode
Up-Transforms - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Transforms
Tr-Adjustments - copying manual Transform adjustments

The first table shows the results of the suite with LR 11.0. Red cells indicate source/target/adjustments that didn't copy correctly.

The second table shows the difference between LR 11.0 and 10.3. Red cells indicate source/target/adjustments that don't work in LR 11.0 but worked in 10.3. Green cells indicate source/target/adjustments that work in LR 11.0 but didn't work in 10.3. There are 10 red cells and 18 green cells -- so LR 11.0 has made a modest net improvement.

[Bob Somrak]

Thanks for the update @John R Ellis 

[Bob Somrak]

@John R Ellis 

What do the alternating U and S under Saved stand for?  I didnt see any mention of it in the listings

[John R Ellis]

Oh, that got accidentally omitted:

U - the tested adjustment has not been saved to metadata in the source photo

S - the tested adjustment has been saved to metadata in the source photo

(I just edited the updated results above to include that.)

[John R Ellis]

I released a new version of the Copy Settings plugin that works with LR 11. As a bonus, it includes the Invert Mask command, which does what it says.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Updates to the Adobe Photography Products were released today and contain improvements to this issue. Please install the update via your Creative Cloud Desktop App or your respective App Store. 

Note: 

You may need to refresh the Creative Cloud App for desktop software to show an update available.  ([Ctrl/Cmd]+[Alt/Opt]+ [ R ])

For Mobile downloads, it may take several days for the update to appear in your respective App Stores.

Thank you for your patience. 

[John R Ellis]

I reran my test suite on LR 11.1, and unfortunately, I don't see any improvements :-<

The suite can be downloaded from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ayr602oegx3ofrr/Copy%20Settings%20test%20suite.2021.10.31.zip?dl=0

In the tables below, the Source and Target representations are:

N - the photo is in normal orientation, with no rotation or mirroring (orientation AB)
C - same as N but with a crop applied, including a crop angle
R - the photo has been rotated clockwise (orientation BC)
RC - the photo has been rotated clockwise, with the same crop as C applied
RCM - the photo has been rotated clockwise and mirrored (flipped horizontal), with the same crop as C applied (orientation CB)

U - the tested adjustment has not been saved to metadata in the source photo

S - the tested adjustment has been saved to metadata in the source photo

The adjustments tested are:

Crop - a crop with a crop angle
Spot - a spot removal using Clone, with the source automatically selected
Graduated - a graduated filter (linear gradient), at angle (now called Linear Gradient in LR 11)
Radial - a radial filter (radial gradient), at angle (now called Radial Gradient in LR 11)
Up-Mode - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Mode
Up-Transforms - Transform > Auto, copying Upright Transforms
Tr-Adjustments - copying manual Transform adjustments (now called Manual Transform [sic] in LR 11)

The first table shows the results of the suite with LR 11.1. Red cells indicate source/target/adjustments that didn't copy correctly.

The second table shows the difference between LR 11.1 and 11.0. Red cells indicate source/target/adjustments that don't work in LR 11.1 but worked in 11.0. Green cells indicate source/target/adjustments that work in LR 11.1 but didn't work in 11.0. There are 5 red cells and 1 green cell -- so very little change.

[John R Ellis]

I reran the test suite on LR 11.3, and there was no change from 11.1.